The Screams
by hickchick
Summary: Chloe and Lex are married. Chloe goes crazy and she reminds Lex of his mother. Will he stick by her side?


Title: The Screams

Author: Hickchick

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Don't own Smallville or any of it's characters.

Description: Chloe and Lex are married and she goes crazy. Angst.

AN: Please review.

She used to only scream his name when he was pounding into her and she was writing underneath him. That had been the screams that he liked to hear. He tried each time to make her scream louder than the time before. They had been married almost three years when she began to scream his name for a new reason. She would call out to him because it was the only way she could escape from the voices inside her head. They told her to do bad things and she didn't like them. But she would scream for Lex and he would come and save her from her internal evil.

But soon it came to be where he couldn't save her anymore. She would scream and cry out to him until she couldn't scream anymore. He would always come to her but she didn't always see or notice him. The voices were just so over powering, nothing could get through. Not even the man who could save her from any evil of this world. He had sacrificed his father's life to save hers and never had he once looked back on his decision. In that moment he had to choose between the love of his life and the father who was never there. Of course he had chosen Chloe, because she was the one that was always there and she would always be there.

The psychological instability that ran in Chloe's family was no secret to Lex. But he knew in his heart that it could never happen to Chloe. She was too strong willed to give into those things. But Lex knew better than to tempt fate, so he had her undergo many psychological tests to see if there was any chance she could be infected. Everything seemed so normal, until things weren't normal anymore. But Lex knew first hand that mental health was not something that should be fooled around with. So when Chloe began to show the first signs he reported it to the doctor. After many tests he concluded that the inevitable had happened, Chloe had inherited her mother's illness. And as of now there was no known cure. She was put on meds to try to help control what was happening, but it only helped some of the time. The rest of the time, Lex was left to fend for himself. She was getting increasingly worse each day.

It wasn't long before Chloe's life fell apart. The once prominent reporter for the Daily Planet had lost her job and was left with nothing to do. Even her friends stopped coming to see her after a while. They didn't want to associate with the crazy lady. Even her own father didn't visit her as often as he should. But no one held it against him because they all knew that when he looked at his little girl he saw his wife and the memories came back to haunt him. Soon she even became too much for Lex to handle. When the meds stopped working and he wasn't able to get through to her, he did the only thing he could. He had her committed to Bell Reeve.

There was nothing else he could do for her. He refused to let her stay at home and rot away before his eyes. At least here she could get the attention she deserved. Despite how hard it was for Lex to see her like this, he still came to visit her often. It only brought back memories of an earlier time. When Lex would be allowed to return home from boarding school for a short while. He and his father would head off to the sanitarium where his mother was being held. The visits should have made him happy because he got to see his mother, but rather they were full of angst and sorrow. Lex couldn't stop himself from wishing it were his father in that condition, instead of his mother. She had done nothing wrong. Yet she was paying the ultimate price.

True to the same, his visits with Chloe were not happy ones. In his mind he kept reminding himself that this was all wrong, it wasn't supposed to be like this. Chloe was different than all those brunettes; she wasn't his mother. Only she wasn't different, she was the same. When he stared into her eyes, he no longer saw the woman he fell in love with. He saw the woman he tried to forget yet fought so hard to remember. In the end, no one reminded him more of his mother than Chloe. Another example of the horrible ironies that life had to offer.

Soon it became too difficult for him to see her in this condition. Going to see her was taking too much time away from his work. And the visits only proved to upset her more than help her. She obviously wasn't getting any better and nothing he was going to do would change that. Lex had always been taught that it's better to cut your losses and move on. This, of course, was no exception to the rule. After getting some legal matters in order, he set out to go see her. It had been almost a week since his last visit. He knew that it wasn't fair to her. He cursed himself for not being a stronger man.

He wanted this day to be over and done with. This had to be one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. He knew that everything would be better after the events of this day had played out. Yet he had put off this day for so long. As he walked down the hall and got closer and closer to her room, he could hear her mumbling to herself. Her words not loud enough for him to hear. Clearly a conversation reserved for those only she could hear. Casually, he strode into her room. He was a little taken back by her appearance. Her face was sunken, with dark circles around her eyes. Her wrists are restrained to the bed to keep her from hurting herself or others. But what hurt him the most was how her face lit up as he entered the room.

"Lex" she greeted him with a smile and a kind word. "I'm so glad you came to see me today. They kept telling me you wouldn't come, but I told them you would, and you did."

Lex nodded sympathetically. This was not the woman he married. This was not the woman who had pledged and devoted her life to becoming a reporter. This was not the brilliant woman who could banter with him until she was blue in the face. This was not the woman who would pick a fight with him just to entice a round of verbal judo, which served as foreplay to a rigorous round of bedroom judo. This was not the woman he promised to stand by forever, in sickness and in health. This was not his Chloe. Yet that provided little justification for what he was about to do.

"What took you so long? It's so late in the afternoon."

"I had to work" he rasped out.

She thought for a moment. "Okay, I guess I can let you off the hook." She said with a smile.

Lex couldn't understand how one minute she could be talking crazy nonsense yet in the next moment seem as if she was fully there.

"You seem so sad, Lex why are you so sad? Did you have another fight with your father?"

"Chloe, my father has been dead for three years now. You know that."

"No he's not, we just saw him yesterday at the Talon back in Smallville." She said with a blank and vacant look in her eyes.

"Chloe, you don't know what you're talking about."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to rub her hand; the same hand that used to fit so perfectly in his when they would go out on dates. It's also the same hand he once held tightly to as they made love in their bed. Now it served as solemn reminder of the things that will never again happen. He lightly brushed his lips over her knuckles.

He wished he could take this awful sickness away from her, and give it to someone more deserving. Why did this have to happen to her so soon? She's so young. She's barely out of college and she's doomed to spend the rest of her life doped up on meds and not knowing where or who she is most of the time. Her whole life had been taken from her just because there was a flaw in her genetic code, which she had received from her own mother.

"Why don't you ever look at me like you used to Lex?" Chloe's question brought him out of his train of thought.

"Because so much has changed." Was his simple reply to such a complicated question.

"But it hasn't. I'm still Chloe and you're still Lex. And that's who we'll be for the rest of our lives."

"But when our destines start coming true, they shape the people we become. I'm not the man that I always hoped I'd be."

"But I love you anyway Lex." She said, and she meant it. Despite all his flaws and shortcomings, she still loved him and she had faith in him. He wished he had the strength to do the same for her.

"I love you too, and I always will." Lex replied, on the verge of tears. He gave her hand a final squeeze. "Which makes what I'm about to do so hard." With that he stood up. "Chloe, I'm sorry." He choked up on the last word.

"What's going on Lex?" questioned Chloe in all of her innocence.

He quickly drew the papers out of his pocket and slammed them down on the table beside her bed. "It's the divorce papers. I can't do this anymore Chloe. I need to let you go."

"No" Chloe whispered as her eyes filled up with tears.

He knew that after a few years of the meds frying her brain she wouldn't be able to remember his name, let alone anything that happened between them. But he would be plagued with the happy memories of their short time together for the rest of his life. However long that will be without her.

"I'm so sorry" Lex said one more time before he rushed out of the room.

"Lex NO! Don't leave me! Come back Lex! I love you! I'm so sorry! Don't leave me here all alone!" Her cries of desperation followed him down the hallway. She was calling out to him to save her. She was pleading with him to not give up on her yet. But all he could do was run away. Just like he ran away from her when he was a little boy. But now he had no excuse. He was a man, yet he couldn't make himself stop running. He couldn't stop the tears that began streaming down his cheeks. He couldn't force himself to look back. He was very much a coward.

He wondered how his father could have been so cruel and heartless to just send his mother away and forget about her. Now he found himself faced with the same situation, and he reacted in exactly the same way. As much as he tried to deny it, he had become his father. He had become a man that his mother would not have been proud of. He had become a husband that Chloe couldn't love. The darkness consumed him and the only light left was the one he was running away from. The light was calling out to him and screaming at him to come back, but he was running forward and embracing the darkness.

As he entered the elevator he could still hears her screams echoing through out the halls. They stopped only when the doors slid closed, but they didn't stop. The sound of her voice pleading for him to help her will never be erased from his mind. His mother begged him not to go as well. "Lex! Stay with me! Please! I need you. Lex!"  
"I'm sorry" was all he could manage to reply. He left her with the promise to return later. But later never came because his mother died that same day. Her biggest fear had been dying alone. And in her final hour she was forced to face it. Lex's biggest fear was becoming his father, yet he would never face it. He would repress and deny until the day he died. Being his father's son had taught him how to do that.

Now he is alone to face his demons. He prays to all the gods above and below him that he will be able to forget them, forget her. Because they are really the same person, crippled by the same incurable disease. The same disease that he had once fought with and beat it. But they weren't as strong as he was. Now he began to realize that they were stronger than he'll ever be. They had faced their fears. Lex was too weak to face his.

Lex sits alone in the darkness and drinks until the screaming stops. But it's not long before he sobers up and it returns. It always does. The screams will never stop. They are claw marks etched into his brain that will never be removed. He finds himself wishing he could go mad just to make the screaming stop. But it never will. It's his eternal punishment for leaving them when they asked him to stay, for leaving her when she needed him the most.

The End.


End file.
